One Night Of Scandal (28 page)

* * *

"Laura and Diana were right," Lottie murmured, her cheek pillowed against Hayden's chest and one leg thrown possessively over his thigh.

"About what?"

She twirled a sweat-dampened coil of chest hair around her finger. "They told me that it would go much easier on me if you made me ready to receive you first."

A deep chuckle reverberated through his chest. "They made it sound as if I was going to be paying you a social call."

Lottie giggled. "Perhaps we should have had Giles announce you." She deepened her voice to mimic the butler's dour inflections. "Lady Oakleigh is ready to receive you now, my lord. If you'll step into the music room and remove all of your clothing, you'll find her waiting on the divan."

"Sounds like a delectable prospect to me. If you'll hang on, I'll ring for him." The muscles in Hayden's chest rippled as he stretched one arm over his head, pretending to reach for the tasseled bellpull that dangled over the harp.

Lottie rolled over on top of him and snatched at his arm, squealing in protest. "Don't you dare! I can just see Mrs. Cadaver"— she winced— "I mean Mrs. Cavendish sneering down her long nose at us. If she caught us in such shocking disarray, she'd probably send Meggie in to dust us."

"And what would be the harm in that?" Hayden cupped her bottom in his hands, a wicked glint lighting his eye. "I can think of several clever uses for a feather duster."

"I dare say you can, my lord. But so can I."

As Hayden felt her soft curls, still damp with his seed, brush his swelling staff, he groaned aloud — half in pain, half in pleasure. Ned need have no fears about his stamina where his lusty little wife was concerned. All she had to do was look at him with those luminous blue eyes of hers and he was cocked and ready to fire again. And that didn't even take into account what the maddening gyrations of her rump were doing to him.

He swirled his tongue over her kiss-swollen lips, his breath growing short. "So tell me — what else did your aunt and sister tell you to prepare you for your duties in the marriage bed?"

"Well…" she replied thoughtfully, giving him a sultry look from beneath her gold-tipped lashes, "they warned me that there were some husbands so uncontrollable in their lusts, so savage in their appetites, that they would fall upon their wives like rutting beasts, seeking only to satisfy themselves."

"How horrendous." Hayden felt his lips slant into a devilish grin. "But just for a little while," he suggested, closing his hands around her waist and sliding out from under her so that she lay sprawled on her stomach among the soft cushions of the divan, "why don't we pretend that I'm exactly that sort of husband?"

As he rose up on his knees behind her, sliding a cushion beneath her hips, Lottie gazed at him over her shoulder, her eyes widening and her own breath quickening. "I suppose I could bear it if I must. I would never wish to shirk my wifely obligations."

"Nor I my husbandly duties." As Hayden pressed himself deep inside of her, she whimpered with delight, her fingernails digging into the divan. "Just close your eyes, angel," he murmured. "It will be over before you know it."

* * *

Through the skylight Hayden could see wispy pink clouds drifting across a canvas that was slowly shifting from slate to blue. Ignoring Lottie's drowsy protests, he tugged the voluminous folds of her nightdress over her head, then gathered her into his arms. She curled her arms around his neck without opening her eyes, her tousled curls tickling his nose. Unlike Justine, she didn't favor heavy floral scents. Instead, her clean, soapy scent mingled with the lingering musk of their loving, intoxicating him with each breath he took.

Although Hayden's first instinct was to carry Lottie to
his
chamber,
his
bed, he forced himself to turn toward the east wing. If he tucked her into his sprawling four-poster, he would only end up making love to her again. And again. He'd already been entirely too greedy in his attentions. All that remained of his wife's innocence were a few rusty stains on both of their thighs. Her ravished body needed time to recover from their passionate couplings.

He would inform Meggie that her mistress was not to be disturbed. As soon as she showed signs of stirring, he would have a hot bath sent to her chamber. An image of Lottie sitting in a brass tub with her golden curls pinned atop her head and her golden breasts glistening with moisture flashed through his head, making his loins quicken anew. Hayden swore, cursing his own noble intentions.

As he carried Lottie into her bedchamber and tucked her beneath the blankets, her large yellow tomcat glared at him accusingly from the foot of the bed.

"You needn't look so outraged," Hayden whispered. "I dare say you've done your share of prowling in your day. And without benefit of matrimony."

Mr. Wiggles was nowhere in sight, but as Hayden was settling an extra quilt over Lottie, Mirabella came skittering out from under the bed. With one of those inexplicable bursts of energy so common to baby cats, she dashed across the bed, then made three wild circuits of the room before bounding up on the rosewood writing desk in the corner.

"Now, look what you've gone and done," Hayden scolded, spotting the overturned ink bottle.

Looking utterly unrepentant, the kitten jumped down from the table and marched calmly to the hearth, where she proceeded to plop down and lick her furry little belly.

Stealing a look at Lottie to make sure she hadn't awakened, Hayden moved to right the bottle before the ink could spill over onto the rug. But it seemed the kitten was justified in its smugness. The ink was dry, spilled long before the cat had gone on its rampage.

As Hayden pried the bottle off the ruined page, his elbow hit the writing case perched on the edge of the desk. It tipped over, pouring out page upon page of vellum stationery, all filled margin to margin with Lottie's rather spectacular handwriting. She tended toward dramatic curlicues and majestic flourishes. She didn't dot her
i
's so much as anoint them with splashes of ink. Picking up one of the pages, Hayden felt a smile curve his lips. His wife wrote much as she made love — with unfettered passion and a raw enthusiasm that more than made up for any lack of precision.

Assuming she was keeping some sort of household journal as most ladies did, he was moving to gather the rest of the pages and tuck them back into the compartment at the bottom of the case when the first sentence on the very first page caught his eye:
I'll never forget the moment I first laid eyes on the man who planned to murder me…

Hayden's smile slowly faded as he sank into the desk chair and began to read.

Chapter 18

Disaster! I am found out!

"L
OTTIE
! L
OTTIE
,
WAKE UP
! I
T
'
S NEARLY
time for tea!" From the quaver of horror in Harriet's voice, one might have deduced that missing afternoon tea was equivalent to missing the last chariot to heaven on the Day of Judgment.

Groaning, Lottie dragged a pillow over her head. But Harriet was not to be dissuaded. She tugged the pillow away, then pried open one of Lottie's sluggish eyelids with her thumb.

"You need to wake up," she shouted, as if Lottie were suffering from deafness as well as drowsiness. "It's Sir Ned's last day here and you've nearly slept it all away." Lottie glared at her friend through one baleful eye as Harriet picked up the glass of water sitting on the table next to the bed and gave it a tentative sniff. "Oh, dear Lord, the marquess hasn't gone and poisoned you, has he?"

Despite Lottie's reassurances to the contrary, Harriet persisted in believing that Hayden was some sort of homicidal lunatic, just waiting for the perfect opportunity to murder them all in their beds.

Shoving Harriet's hand away, Lottie sat up. "Do stop fussing over me, Harriet. No one's slipped any arsenic into my tea. I just didn't get much sleep last night."

As Lottie flexed her limbs in a long, lazy stretch, she was keenly reminded of exactly what she'd been doing instead of sleeping. She was sore in muscles she'd never even known she had. But if not for that warm, tingly soreness, she might have wondered if the whole night hadn't been some delicious dream. Perhaps it would be easier to believe if she had woken up in Hayden's bed, in Hayden's arms.

"Tell me, Harriet," she asked, hugging her knees to her chest, "have you never thought it odd that the marquess and I don't share a bedchamber?"

Her friend shrugged. "Not really. My parents can barely stand to share a house. So what kept you awake last night? Was it the return of the ghost?" Harriet cast a nervous look over her shoulder. "Apparently, I slept right through the fracas, but the servants have been whispering about it all morning. Someone or
something
was playing the piano in the music room again. At first everyone thought it was Allegra, but when Martha looked in on her, there she was, nestled snug in her bed. Meggie said Martha came flying back into the servants' quarters as if her skirt was afire." Harriet looked rather pleased by that tidbit. "Oh, and there was no wailing this time, but after the music stopped, several of the servants claim to have heard the most frightful moaning."

"Indeed?" Hoping to hide both her smile and her blush, Lottie pretended to smother another yawn behind her hand.

Harriet's eyes grew even rounder. "Martha told me it sounded as if some poor soul was being tortured to death."

Lottie saw herself sprawled half-naked on top of the piano; lying limp and sated with pleasure beneath Hayden's powerful body; on the divan shivering with anticipation as he rose up on his knees behind her. The only death delivered by her husband had been the one the French so eloquently called
le petit mort
. And it was a death she would gladly die a thousand times at his skillful hands.

Unable to completely hide her shiver of delight, she said, "You can tell Meggie to stop fretting. I don't think we'll be hearing from the ghost again any time soon."

"What makes you say that?"

Lottie could not bring herself to betray Justine, not even to Harriet. She was too grateful to the woman for luring both her and Hayden to the music room with that haunting melody. "It's just a notion I have. And besides, who wants to dwell on the past all the time when the future is all that matters?" Driven by a surge of hope that she, Hayden, and Allegra might actually become a family, Lottie threw back the blankets and bounded out of the bed. "I'm ravenous. Didn't you say something about tea? I feel as if I could eat a whole tray of scones." Before Harriet could answer, Lottie strode to the window and threw up the sash. "How could I have slept so much of the day away? It's absolutely glorious out there!"

Outside the manor, the wind whipped across the endless expanse of moor, driving scudding gray clouds across an even bleaker sky.

Lottie turned around to find Harriet blinking at her as if she'd lost her wits. "Are you entirely sure you haven't been poisoned?"

Lottie laughed. "If I have, then I'm already craving more of the stuff, for it's the sweetest poison I've ever tasted."

Before she could close the window, a gust of wind went swirling around her, sending the papers scattered across the writing desk fluttering into the air. Both she and Harriet rushed to rescue them. Lottie had half of them stuffed back into her writing case before she realized something was amiss. Every page in her hands was blank.

She frowned down at them in confusion for a moment before snatching the remaining pages out of Harriet's hands. They, too, were as pristine as they'd been on the day she'd purchased them from the Bond Street stationers.

"Whatever is the matter?" Harriet asked, staring at Lottie's trembling hands. "You've gone as pale as a ghost."

Grabbing up the writing case, Lottie pried frantically at the false panel nestled in its bottom. The compartment below was empty.

"My book," she whispered, dread clutching at her stomach as every damning word she'd written since coming to Oakwylde Manor resounded through her brain. "It's gone."

* * *

After a fruitless search of the house, Lottie finally found Hayden sitting on a rock at the edge of the cliffs, framed by a misty canvas of sea and sky. Although the rocks below weren't visible from her vantage point, Lottie could almost feel them there, their jagged and glistening teeth yawning open to snag the careless or the foolhardy.

Hayden was studying the document in his hand and looking every inch the Gothic villain in his buff-colored trousers, open-throated ivory shirt, and scuffed boots. The restless fingers of the wind tossed his dark hair. As Lottie studied the terse line of his mouth, she marveled that it could be the same mouth that had curved into a tender smile before brushing her lips with a kiss, the same mouth that had given her such exquisite pleasure only a few hours before.

Feeling heat rush from her cheeks to other even more traitorous regions of her body, she said, "You had no right to go through my things."

Hayden lifted his head to meet her challenging gaze. They both knew she was bluffing. According to the laws of England, she had no things. Everything she owned belonged to her husband. Including her body.

"You're absolutely correct," he admitted, startling her. "I'm quite ashamed of myself. But you really should consider my ill manners a tribute to your literary skills. I stumbled upon the first page of your little masterpiece by accident, but once I started reading, I became so engrossed in the adventures of the 'Deadly Duke' and his fearless young bride that I couldn't bring myself to stop."

He withdrew an entire stack of pages from a cleft in the rock. With a sinking feeling, Lottie recognized her own handwriting. Oddly enough, she felt more naked before him now than she had last night. Then she had felt cherished and protected. Now she felt raw and exposed, as if Hayden was peering into the darkest, most cobweb-infested recesses of her soul with a quizzing glass. It was all she could do not to snatch up the pages and hide them behind her back.

She nodded toward the edge of the cliff. "I'm surprised you haven't scattered them to the wind."